Desert Island

Profile

The sign may say it’s a bakery, but there’s no bread on this Desert Island. When artist and comic-lover Gabriel Fowler opened his comics store in this happening location in Williamsburg in 2008, he liked the original sign so much he decided to keep it�with his own addition. Today it reads, �Italian, French, Sicilian Bread�and Comic Booklets.� Fowler stocks the store’s roughshod wooden shelves (his own handiwork) with comics he would want to have if stranded on a desert island. Hence the name and the wildly eclectic selection: everything from graphic staples like Tin-Tin and Persepolis to more far-out options like Bukowski-Crumb collaborations and fringe mags like Craft and Juxtapoz. Hardcover graphic novels take up an entire wall of shelves, while a smaller rack up front houses paperback comics. There’s even a small prose section with some Eggers titles and other humorous works. Desert Island also regularly hosts book signings with comic-book authors, and local artists frequently drop by to show Fowler their prints, many of which end up as part of the phantasmagoric collection of graphic art plastering the walls. And if all that doesn’t satisfy your appetite, no worries: A real bakery’s a block away. — Alex Littlefield